nihilism in music

Z

zhao

there are no accidents
jon woscencroft or colin newman from touch once said something like he did not see any point in expressing angst through music. i never forgot this statement as it struck me as interesting while I atleast partially disagree...

I still respond to angry music... the south has some of the most nihilistic hiphop i've ever heard, and that's what initially drew me to the sound. and i am absolutely the only one in my circle of friends who is open to black and otherwise metal (even if the genre is 98 % garbage). "in the flat field", "helter skelter", etc, remain some of my favorite songs... and back in the jungle days my favorite was absolutely the Panacea camp of dark-as-fuck-destroy-everything drum'n'bass.

was wondering what people here think of the subject, from musical as well as political, philosophical or cultural anthropological points of view... particularly the angst-ridden end of nihilism (as opposed to the kind that revels in earthly pleasures, but ofcourse feel free to ruminate on that as well)

is it still, or was it ever, valid to express anger through music? is discontent so commodified these days that angst is entirely cliche and powerless? what about the "scream becomes a whisper" thing of dark ambient? can doom-metal actually be transcendent? can angry music be liberating or is it only a dead-end?
 
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Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
much of the grime i listen to is, i suppose, very nihilistic, but somewhere down the line i lost truck with nihilistic guitar music.

my feeling about it in general is i'm in favour of it when (get ready to dodge the new age cliche) it has a healthy dose of zen attached. so fr'instance wiley's "cold" shtick seems altogether more reasonable/attractive than just emo railing/ranting. likewise the most frigid techno vs the more bombastic electronica of panacea. it's the difference between dispassionate objectiviy and babywail.

like your "scream becomes a whisper" phrase....
 
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Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
I think nihilism and anger are very different emotions. You cant be angry without having an opinion, whereas nihilism is the stance that all personal opinion and all personal experience as a whole is void.

Nihilism is full of contradictions - for a start, the artist is expressing their opinion that all opinion is void.

In addition, what i always think about nihilistic music is: well, you're motivated enough to make this music and promote it, you obviously attach some value to it, so how nihilistic can you really be?

Nihilistic music at its best is about noise and physical sensation, numbing the body like an aural mandrax and taking it to a place where logical contradiction ceases to be important - it's the flipside of hedonism, which is why dance/drug scenes find it so easy to cross into the dark side.
 
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Tim F

Well-known member
When we say we obejct to nihilism in music, don't we simply mean we object to nihilism we can "see through" - nihilism which fails to affect us, which is all bark and no bite?

Most criticisms of "emo" approaches to music (of any genre) I've seen seem to object to the way that the emotion in question becomes an empty formalist gesture and, hence, a devalued currency. But then this has the capacity to be true of practicallly anything in music, so I don't see much use therefore in rejecting nihilism point blank due to such meaningless excesses - it would be a bit like rejecting horn sections because you don't like Michael Buble.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
WOEBOT said:
much of the grime i listen to is, i suppose, very nihilistic, but somewhere down the line i lost truck with nihilistic guitar music.

my feeling about it in general is i'm in favour of it when (get ready to dodge the new age cliche) it has a healthy dose of zen attached. so fr'instance wiley's "cold" shtick seems altogether more reasonable/attractive than just emo railing/ranting. likewise the most frigid techno vs the more bombastic electronica of panacea. it's the difference between dispassionate objectiviy and babywail.

like your "scream becomes a whisper" phrase....
Click to expand...

interesting distinction... kind of like the difference between (early) Wire's stoic, reserved indignation and... say, the Pistols' ardent outrage. both have a place in my book... maybe it is the same difference as that between Surgeon's retentive/relentless repetition and Alec Empire's expulsive tantrums. sorry to put things in Freudian terms but they seem kind of applicable here - maybe it is simply the difference between "holding it in" and "letting it out".

I don't think I coined that scream-whisper phrase... wait... did i? fuck I can't remember.

Gabba Flamenco Crossover said:
I think nihilism and anger are very different emotions. You cant be angry without having an opinion, whereas nihilism is the stance that all personal opinion and all personal experience as a whole is void.

In addition, what i always think about nihilistic music is: well, you're motivated enough to make this music and promote it, you obviously attach some value to it, so how nihilistic can you really be?

Nihilistic music at its best is about noise and physical sensation, numbing the body like an aural mandrax and taking it to a place where logical contradiction ceases to be important - it's the flipside of hedonism, which is why dance/drug scenes find it so easy to cross into the dark side.
Click to expand...

thanks... I realize that I am using these terms in loose, irresponsible, and commonly mistaken ways... I probably should've just used angst in place of nihilism. what do people here think of trent reznor?
 
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F

francesco

Minerva Estassi
Nihil non est, quia hoc ipsum nihil nomen habet nihili.

confucius said:
what do people here think of trent reznor?
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perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most
forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same
open my eyes wake up wake up WAKE UP IN FLAMES
 
D

D84

Well-known member
confucius said:
I really should know what this means, shouldn't i? translation?
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I think it means something like this:

"Nothing does not exist, because this very nothing has the name of nothing."

It's a load of double negatives which means something like "something (matter) exists"

As for nihilist/angsty music the best is Godflesh but that seemed to me to deal more with issues of devotion, religion etc (at least what I could make of the lyrics). Early Swans could also be a good example.

It's worth noting that both these groups became more expansive and "cosmic", Swans with stuff like "Love of Life" and Godflesh reforming as Jesu.

Never got into Nine Inch Nails - seems like a lot of whingeing etc. Ministry etc were more my cup of tea from that scene: the lyrics and music had a lot more meat; and they were more angry than angsty and the anger was more focussed, ie. politically, as opposed to the more general "teenage" anger at being born into this valley of tears (damn you, god!), which I blame partly on our society's idealisation of childhood..
 
T

tate

Brown Sugar
francesco said:
Nihil non est, quia hoc ipsum nihil nomen habet nihili.
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"nothing does not exist, because this very (or 'very same') nothing has the name of nothing"

I am guessing that francesco's point in quoting Nicolaus of Cusa is to remind us that many philosophers, beginning with Parmenides (as far as we know from the earliest surviving Greek evidence, in any case), have argued that 'nothing' does not itself actually exist, a view which, if held, would presumably complicate one's usage of the word 'nihilism.'

The above-quoted Latin phrase, however, occurs in a dialogue written by someone who very much believed in god, and who needed to counter the notion of 'nothing' in order to erect his metaphysics -- so for us, today, the phrase's applicability would require a certain amount of qualification (at the very least), unless one happens to accept the transcendental guarantor of a deity or the infinite etc.

I myself would never accept N of Cusa's metaphysics, but the aforementioned phrase does raise the interesting question of the role played by approaches to 'nothing' in philosophical tradition from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche to Heidegger and beyond.

I suspect that the Badiou folks will have something to say here if they so choose (esp regarding N of Cusa's view of mathematics).
 
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